Brew on the Grid signs lease for new cafe in Marlborough

WORCESTER BUSINESS JOURNAL – Not long after opening in downtown Worcester’s Grid District, the coffee shop Brew on the Grid is already working on several new locations, including a new lease on Route 20 in Marlborough.

By June, Brew on the Grid plans to have a new cafe open on Windsor Street in Cambridge, between Central Square and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shortly after, a location on Central Avenue in downtown Lynn should open.

Frank Peace, the CEO of New England Craft Restaurant Concepts, has signed a lease in on Route 20 in Marlborough. The storefront is now a Starbucks, but the Seattle chain will be moving across the street into the under-construction Apex Center. There’s a fourth location, too, in Salem, for which construction hasn’t yet begun.

Peace, formerly of Starbucks, opened Brew on the Grid on Franklin Street in Worcester just last summer. In the last several weeks, the cafe has reached its best sales and continues to see a positive trajectory, he said.

Like the downtown Worcester location, the locations in Cambridge and Lynn will be in central, mixed-use areas with a good amount of foot traffic. But the Marlborough location — along a major artery in a suburban area — also caught Peace’s eye.

“It provides an up-and-coming opportunity for a player like me,” he said of the lease there.